I will try and answer all your questions in the easiest way to understand, as the actual definition of some of this stuff is pretty technical.
So this is an extreme oversimplification of it, but the cloud refers to computers (servers) that are not inside your house, but instead are made available to people over the internet and provide some service. In this case file storage. For example, if I upload something to dropbox, it is on the cloud, because it is no longer stuck in my house, but it is on someone else's server where I can access it.
In terms of your data on your computer that you are afraid of being lost, I would recommend buying an external hard drive in order to back up stuff to. This is much easier for a number of reasons, and more secure.
Now to all the questions:
1. You really wouldnt backup your entire home computer to a cloud provider if you have a lot of stuff on it. Or just in general. Doing that would not only be slow, but also would slow down your internet, and also is really not available. You can back up specific things to the cloud, like photos or videos, but again if you have a large amount of data its not practical.
2. You can watch media like videos right from most cloud storage providers sites. Mega, Dropbox, Onedrive, Google Drive, are a few examples. But you wouldnt be using VLC, no.
3. No…. Just no
4. I wouldn't recommend it for things you frequently use. Or just in general you should always have a copy of your data that you can physically access. But, for example, if you have a bunch of old photos from college that you dont want to delete, but dont really care about, yeah you could upload them to a cloud storage provider and then delete the local files.
5. Ummm. A VPN doesn't protect your files. When you move a file into the cloud, it still has a physical location, its just that location is not in your home any more, it is some companies server. These companies have their own file protection and other stuff.
6. Depending on the website, they could. Again seeing as I am assuming some of your data is torrented you really wouldnt put that in the cloud.
7. No.
8. A VPN isnt the protection you seem to think it is. But what you would do is check the cloud providers policies and security history to see how reliable they are. Mega is good in that regard, as they encrypt all your shit.
9. Technically sites exist that let you torrent using the cloud, but it generally costs money, and I wouldnt recommend it. Its kind of shady, and not really how torrents are supposed to work.
10. A bit silly.
11. So there are free options, I am surprised you dont use one already like Google Drive or iCloud or Onedrive. There are also paid options as there are limits on how much free storage you get on every site
No. But as long as its with a company that you have heard of, its probably fine.
Yeah theres size limits, and you can pay for more storage. It all differs from site to site
So here is my suggestion, grab this: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236894
And set your computer to back up to it.
–Disclaimer: I dont work for newegg or anything, its just a easy site.